Contours of a New Decade
INTERVIEW TITEL BOEIENDE BINNENSTAD
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The inner city of Eindhoven has seen a lot of construction and renewal in the past years.What makes it relatively unique in the country is the fact that it has seen highrise development. Normally, this will be restricted to peripheral locations, but Eindhoven, together with Rotterdam breaks this tradition. Examples are the Vesteda-tower, built in 2006, and the more recent Student Hotel tower next to the train station. These developments also fall within the ‘Verdichtingsvisie’, or densification vision. Supervisor of city development and renowned architect Winy Maas is one of the main proprietors of this strategy. It increases the quality of the city on multiple fronts and has therefore been maintained since 2008. An interesting development that helps in the realization of this high-rise vision is the Bouwhub. This is a location close to the city center from which a large portion of logistic practices for multiple projects are taken care of: it will help to tune plans to each other’s needs and reduce congestion and pollution in the city center.
One of the streets where the issue of congestion became very problematic was the Vestdijk. It is one of the most well-known streets in Eindhoven, but before the start of its renewal two years ago most people would not describe the street as being attractive. It was cramped with three traffic lanes and thus caused a lot of air and sound pollution. Clearly, renewal was necessary, and the municipality started rebuilding the street two years ago. In order to get a better idea of what developments are taking place, and to become more acquainted with future developments, we spoke to Victor Wijdeveld, an enthusiastic junior project manager at the department of project development.After completing his study in the city of Amsterdam, he strived to work in a city that had a high emphasis on innovation and saw things from an open-minded perspective. Eindhoven suited this vision very well, and Victor is now highly involved in the renewal project ‘Boeiende Binnenstad’. It focuses on visually, as well as practically updating the city center on street level. The current
